1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an exercising apparatus and, more particularly, to such an exercising apparatus which has particular utility in affording capabilities not heretofore possible using prior art exercising equipment.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The development of exercising equipment is, from an historical perspective, a relatively recent phenomenon. While free weights have been known for a somewhat longer period of time, mechanical exercising equipment has existed for only a few decades. For example, exercising equipment employing one or more stacks of weight plates as the resistance force have been known for several decades. Such a device is depicted in the Zinkin U.S. Pat. No. 2,932,509 which was issued in 1960. Devices of this type were a substantial advance in the art in a variety of respects. By employing weight stacks, the desired amount of weight could readily be selected and applied as the resistance force during the performance of a particular exercise. Since the weight plates were captured within the device and the path of travel thereof controlled by the device during exercising, there was significantly less risk of injury to the operator. The operator was free to concentrate on the form and repetition involved in the particular exercise without the distraction of retaining the weights within a prescribed path as required with free weights. These benefits and others experienced in the use of such prior art exercising equipment were significant and resulted in the development of an entirely new industry.
Other advances in the art included the development of exercising equipment having multiple stations in a single unit. The aforementioned patent depicts such a device. The operator was permitted to perform a multiplicity of different types of exercises in a single unit by virtue of the multiple stations. Such prior art devices constituted an improvement over the prior art in that a plurality of exercises could be performed without having a corresponding plurality of discrete exercising devices. This was not only substantially less expensive, but required significantly less space. Other improvements in equipment of this type included devices which employed a single common weight stack for use by the operator at all of the stations thereof. This not only reduced the expense of such equipment, but allowed the devices to be produced in substantially smaller sizes.
Thereafter, hydraulic and pneumatic exercising machines were developed. Such machines employed a fluid or a gas as the resistance force rather than the comparatively cumbersome weight stacks of prior art devices. For example, the Keiser U.S. Pat. No. 4,050,310 issued in 1977 is directed to an hydraulic exercising machine. The Keiser U.S. Pat. No. 4,257,593 issued in 1981 is directed to a pneumatic exercising apparatus upon which an entirely new segment of the industry was developed. Such devices have numerous operative advantages over the prior art, particularly for certain uses. They are less cumbersome and generally expensive than free weight machines. They possess a virtually infinite degree of adjustability, unlike free weight machines. They avoid the development of inertia characteristic of the weight stack in free weight machines. There are a plurality of more arcane advantages in such pneumatic exercising machines.
Thus, the state of the art relative to exercising equipment includes a plurality of types of exercising devices having a melange of relative attributes and detriments. However, all conventional exercising devices suffer from several universal operative disadvantages. There has not heretofore, as a practical matter, been an exercising device capable of permitting an operator simultaneously to exercise both upper body and lower body musculature. Conventional exercising equipment of any truly effective type requires that the operator exercise only selected upper body muscles, or selected lower body muscles at any one time. While it has been recognized that it would be desirable to be able to exercise the upper body and lower body at the same time, no satisfactory device for achieving this objective has heretofore been developed.
In addition, all prior art exercising equipment requires that the operator either adjust to the machine, or reconfigure the machine, in order to perform a different exercise than the one previously performed. Such repositioning and/or reconfiguring necessitates a relatively substantial delay in the exercising program. This detracts from what would otherwise be an optimum program of exercise. This imperative has prevented the development of exercising programs of any particular level of sophistication. It has not heretofore been possible, as a practical matter, to vary the resistance force during continuous exercising; or to vary the attitude of exercising during continuous exercising; or to vary both the resistance force and the attitude of exercising; or to be able to provide such variation for simultaneous exercising of both the upper and lower body; or to permit exercising in different environments such as those having substantially reduced gravity as compared with that of the planet earth while maintaining substantially identical parameters for such exercising; or to achieve all, or any combination, of the foregoing objectives with a precision in both control and adjustability permitting a substantial advance in the benefits to be achieved in accordance with a regimen for exercise which may be either of a basic or sophisticated design.
Therefore, it has long been known that it would be desirable to have an exercising apparatus which permits upper body and lower body musculature to be exercised simultaneously; which is readily adjustable to precise selected configurations for exercising under the control of the operator; which affords the capability of exercising with precisely the same operative effects in substantially dissimilar operative environments; which affords the capability of exercising in accordance with a program of exercise permitting both the resistance force and the attitude of such exercising to be varied during substantially continuous exercising; which is compact and suitable for use in operative environments such as extraterrestrial environments in which the magnitude of gravity is substantially reduced relative to that of the planet earth; and which is otherwise entirely successful in achieving its operational objectives.